This week the Liberal government will table its
2017 budget. While most of the focus will be on domestic themes, some of us will
be looking for progress towards realizing Canada’s globalist, feminist prime minister’s
ambition of getting Canada back on the world stage.

The budget however
is a political document (and the worst kind of political document at that, one
with a lot of numbers). Politicians and numbers mix like oil and water —
numbers can mask the government’s true commitment or be spun to overplay it. So,
we will be ready to un-spin, with several areas in mind.

A penchant for “doubling”

Despite
significant international achievements for which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
is celebrated by progressives the world over — resettlement of Syrian refugees,
leadership at home and abroad on climate change, on global health and sexual
reproductive health rights (SRHR) — the Liberal track-record is not without its
flaws.

The prime
minister’s penchant for suggesting everything is being “doubled” or otherwise
inflating the significance of increases (compared to the Conservatives) has
made things worse. It is also at odds with his explicit rejection
of development spending targets (like the UN’s recommended 0.7 percent of GNI,
which Canada falls far below with 0.28 percent) as well as GAC’s
position
on the same which has been that 0.7 is too ambitious in the current fiscal
climate.

The Liberal
government has made a series of key international pronouncements that are often
a combination of lofty rhetoric and big numbers — and Budget 2017 may be no
different. Let’s un-spin some examples:

Climate finance: In November 2015, just before COP21, the prime minister announced
a major five-year $2.65-billion climate finance commitment to developing
countries and called it a “doubling”
of previous levels. This got us confused. The original fast-start financing
commitment to developing countries, made by the Conservatives, was$1.2
billion.
But, it was over three years. If the Liberals were doubling it they would reach
it by 2018-19. But they will not until 2020-21, so this is not doubling.

The increase in funding to the
Global Fund: In September 2016, Trudeau hosted the replenishment of the
Global Fund and Canada received praise for increasing its pledge by 23 percent. The Fund converts
pledges to U.S. dollars, because the things it buys — vaccines, medicines,
health equipment — are priced in U.S. dollars. Canada’s latest pledge was
indeed a 23 percent increase compared to the last round in 2013, but in
Canadian dollars. Since the last round, the Loonie has fallen about 23 percent to
the U.S. dollar. Which means in real U.S. currency terms this pledge is flat,
or may even end up being a decrease.
We checked the past track record: Canada has raised its pledge in every round.
The past two rounds (2008-10 and 2011-13) were 25 percent and 29 percent higher
respectively — and, pledged in U.S. dollars.

Recent investment in Sexual
and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR): We find the opposite when it comes to the government’s
recent announcement on International Women’s Day of a “doubling”
of Canada’s financing for SRHR to $650 million over three years. The
government appears to have underestimated or downplayed its new commitment. The
announcement suggested Canada currently spends $108 million on SRHR. This is
impossible to verify because SRHR is not a category in any Canadian or global
aid database. Despite significant data gaps, we analyzed the issue further, and
could not back up the government’s math. The best we can say, based on credible
independent analysis, is that Canada spends about US$43 million on family planning.
This new commitment is therefore much
more than doubling. Naturally we are curious why the government didn't
say “quadrupling” as would be the case taking it at face value.

The trouble with talk

Government rhetoric often
does not translate into spending, and recent examples on everything from
feminism to infrastructure show this. They are another reminder that just
because the government has been emphasizing something in the global arena,
doesn’t mean it will put its money where its mouth is this week.

In its
recent Feminist
Scorecard,
for instance, Oxfam Canada concludes: The Liberal government’s bold feminist
rhetoric has not yet translated into policy and spending decisions that push
the needle forward on gender equality.

When it comes to infrastructure, the Parliamentary
Budget Office notes: the government’s spending is far short of plans. There is
growing risk that money the government originally expected to be spent in
2016-17 will be deferred to subsequent years. The government has provided no
performance measurement framework with which to evaluate the New Infrastructure
Plan’s performance, and only limited visibility on tracking how the money is being spent.

What we can expect

Budget
2016 added $256 million over two years to the international assistance envelope
(IAE). It was a modest investment (the total budget is nearly $5 billion per
year); nevertheless, it was the first increase in years. We do not expect any
significant financial addition to this.

We expect
Budget 2017 will pay lip service to forthcoming outcomes of the year-long
international assistance review Global Affairs Canada (GAC) has been conducting,
which is expected to result in a new “feminist international assistance policy.”

Key action
on development will likely be outside GAC’s development arm (i.e. outside the
former CIDA). Especially key to watch will be the implementation of the development finance initiative (DFI) — a mechanism announced
within Budget 2015 by which taxpayer dollars can be used to leverage greater
investment in development from the private sector and other non-traditional
partners. The initial financial commitment under the Conservatives however was
paltry: $300 million over five years. Two years on, the mechanism is not yet
operational.

It would be
no surprise if the Liberals not only (finally) implemented the DFI, but also
stepped it up significantly. Given the scale of opportunity and need, anything
less than a quintupling
of the Budget 2015 level, or $300 million a year, would be nothing to write home
about. Watch for whether it will be setup as an independent crown corporation or
remain within Export Development Canada, how the DFI’s risk orientation and
development mandate will be secured, and whether it will have the full range of
financial instruments.

Overall,
when it comes to Budget 2017 and development, watch what the government does,
not what it says.

Development
spending is increasing modestly after years of stagnation and decline. The
Liberals however are not about to hug balloons reading “0.7 percent of GNI” any
time soon. Budget 2017 will cobble together re-announcements and,
prospectively, the DFI.

The budget is a political document and
politicians live in spin. So, as the Russians remind us: doveryai, no proveryai — trust, but verify.

About

OpenCanada is a digital publication sitting at the intersection of public policy, scholarship and journalism. We produce multimedia content to explain, analyze and tell stories about the increasingly complex and rapidly shifting world of foreign policy and international affairs.